I'm down to 1-2 sodas a day, mostly for cost saving. If I want something else my go to is lemon-cucumber water. I've got a 64 oz water bottle that I refill a few times through the day and splash in a little lemon juice. If I'm feeling super bougie, I cut up some cucumber in the morning and chuck it in there.

If you want flavored water without sugar or artificial sweeteners I've been using the Sodastream fruit drops that come in the little glass bottles. I don't use their machine to make soda but some of their flavorings are good, and all the other drops I've looked at have either caffeine and/or sucralose. A few drops in a quart of water makes it taste pretty good. I've tried lemon, lime, orange, and mango. Only one not good was the mango, that one was terrible.

I just looked at those. They are very cagey on their website about exactly what their stuff is made up of. Since the descriptor 'all natural' has NO legal meaning (and is, therefore, bullshit marketing) I would suspect that this is made of artificial flavorings or 'natural' ones that are not exactly healthy.

An option - one I use occasionally with carbonated water, and use daily with my protein shakes - is to simply add a drop or two of a TRUE essential oil (not ones one gets off Amazon - those are usually 95+% carrier oil, which can be dangerous to ingest either by mouth or inhalation (or have in contact with skin), &/or synthetics which are generally outright dangerous, particularly to ingest). A good source for true essential oils is here: https://store.draxe.com/collections/essential-oils A good rule for essential oils you get anywhere: if it does not have a nutrition label on the bottle, it is not safe to ingest (or use at all, most likely). That nutrition label also means that what is inside has been independently tested and is what it says on the label.

Essential oils - REAL ones - are phenomenal for health benefits. [And some, non-ingestible ones, such a melaleuca ('Tea Tree') have been found in lab studies to kill MRSA, for instance, on top of a multitude of other things. However, melaleuca is toxic to both cats and dogs, so needs to be VERY carefully used in their presence, and - like most essential oils with pets - NEVER diffused where they can't get away from it!]

Considering that these three, from Dr. Axe's store, range from $15-39 per bottle, they are a bargain, when 1-2 drops is all that is needed to flavor a drink, and each bottle is 15 ml - so: with each ml 20 drops, that's 150-300 drinks for $15-39 (depending on the flavor)! That's a freakin' BARGAIN. Plus, there are health benefits to these, where there are none to artificial (or 'all natural') flavors, and there can be serious health risks from artificial (or 'all natural') flavorings, depending on what they are [basically, if the company doesn't say exactly what they are: don't ingest them is a safe rule of thumb].

If you want flavored water without sugar or artificial sweeteners I've been using the Sodastream fruit drops that come in the little glass bottles. I don't use their machine to make soda but some of their flavorings are good, and all the other drops I've looked at have either caffeine and/or sucralose. A few drops in a quart of water makes it taste pretty good. I've tried lemon, lime, orange, and mango. Only one not good was the mango, that one was terrible.

I just looked at those. They are very cagey on their website about exactly what their stuff is made up of. Since the descriptor 'all natural' has NO legal meaning (and is, therefore, bullshit marketing) I would suspect that this is made of artificial flavorings or 'natural' ones that are not exactly healthy.

An option - one I use occasionally with carbonated water, and use daily with my protein shakes - is to simply add a drop or two of a TRUE essential oil (not ones one gets off Amazon - those are usually 95+% carrier oil, which can be dangerous to ingest either by mouth or inhalation (or have in contact with skin), &/or synthetics which are generally outright dangerous, particularly to ingest). A good source for true essential oils is here: https://store.draxe.com/collections/essential-oils A good rule for essential oils you get anywhere: if it does not have a nutrition label on the bottle, it is not safe to ingest (or use at all, most likely). That nutrition label also means that what is inside has been independently tested and is what it says on the label.

Essential oils - REAL ones - are phenomenal for health benefits. [And some, non-ingestible ones, such a melaleuca ('Tea Tree') have been found in lab studies to kill MRSA, for instance, on top of a multitude of other things. However, melaleuca is toxic to both cats and dogs, so needs to be VERY carefully used in their presence, and - like most essential oils with pets - NEVER diffused where they can't get away from it!]

Considering that these three, from Dr. Axe's store, range from $15-39 per bottle, they are a bargain, when 1-2 drops is all that is needed to flavor a drink, and each bottle is 15 ml - so: with each ml 20 drops, that's 150-300 drinks for $15-39 (depending on the flavor)! That's a freakin' BARGAIN. Plus, there are health benefits to these, where there are none to artificial (or 'all natural') flavors, and there can be serious health risks from artificial (or 'all natural') flavorings, depending on what they are [basically, if the company doesn't say exactly what they are: don't ingest them is a safe rule of thumb].

If you want flavored water without sugar or artificial sweeteners I've been using the Sodastream fruit drops that come in the little glass bottles. I don't use their machine to make soda but some of their flavorings are good, and all the other drops I've looked at have either caffeine and/or sucralose. A few drops in a quart of water makes it taste pretty good. I've tried lemon, lime, orange, and mango. Only one not good was the mango, that one was terrible.

I just looked at those. They are very cagey on their website about exactly what their stuff is made up of. Since the descriptor 'all natural' has NO legal meaning (and is, therefore, bullshit marketing) I would suspect that this is made of artificial flavorings or 'natural' ones that are not exactly healthy.

An option - one I use occasionally with carbonated water, and use daily with my protein shakes - is to simply add a drop or two of a TRUE essential oil (not ones one gets off Amazon - those are usually 95+% carrier oil, which can be dangerous to ingest either by mouth or inhalation (or have in contact with skin), &/or synthetics which are generally outright dangerous, particularly to ingest). A good source for true essential oils is here: https://store.draxe.com/collections/essential-oils A good rule for essential oils you get anywhere: if it does not have a nutrition label on the bottle, it is not safe to ingest (or use at all, most likely). That nutrition label also means that what is inside has been independently tested and is what it says on the label.

Essential oils - REAL ones - are phenomenal for health benefits. [And some, non-ingestible ones, such a melaleuca ('Tea Tree') have been found in lab studies to kill MRSA, for instance, on top of a multitude of other things. However, melaleuca is toxic to both cats and dogs, so needs to be VERY carefully used in their presence, and - like most essential oils with pets - NEVER diffused where they can't get away from it!]

Considering that these three, from Dr. Axe's store, range from $15-39 per bottle, they are a bargain, when 1-2 drops is all that is needed to flavor a drink, and each bottle is 15 ml - so: with each ml 20 drops, that's 150-300 drinks for $15-39 (depending on the flavor)! That's a freakin' BARGAIN. Plus, there are health benefits to these, where there are none to artificial (or 'all natural') flavors, and there can be serious health risks from artificial (or 'all natural') flavorings, depending on what they are [basically, if the company doesn't say exactly what they are: don't ingest them is a safe rule of thumb].

Thank you for the link. I do not remember ever seeing anything from Dr. Axe saying anything about broken bones or brain tumors and essential oils, or that would have been a BIG red flag!

For some of what Dr. Axe reports with essential oils, he includes links to legitimate journals, and I've gone to the links and read what I could (usually they only show the abstract for free). And, while there may be limitations - possibly severe ones - to the health benefits of them, the true essential oils made from foods are far less harmful than chemical flavorants which our bodies have not adapted to ingest and eliminate, plus the essential oils are dense perveyors of flavor, so are inexpensive. That is basically what I have used them for, to keep from getting bored with the same bland flavor shake each day, with other potential benefits (if any) a side-effect or bonus.

With melaleuca (Tea Tree), from what I've read it is not safe to ingest, so it has only ever been used by me as a surface disinfectant (which is about as close as one can get in their life to a petrie dish, which is where it was lab tested and found effective in whichever studies I'd looked up for it at the time I was debating whether to get any - does wonders on mold [but so does vinegar]).

There's nothing wrong with artificial flavors as long as they come from a reputable company. I run chemical analysis on scents and flavors in the lab, most of the flavor or smell that you recognize comes from a handful of chemicals in various amounts. Fairly easy to make them to even higher purity levels than they occur in plants. Isoamyl alcohol made in the lab is exactly the same as that made in a banana. Extracting it from a banana has the same risks of contamination as making it from raw materials, it's all down to how clean the equipment is and how clean or pure the sources are.

Anyway, I thought companies can't say natural if it's artificial or imitation? So the Sodastream stuff is probably extracted and purified from plants, just that the mixture they use for something like the lime flavor doesn't come from actual limes. Maybe someday I'll bring some into work and run it to see if there are any harmful contaminates in them. But it won't be for a while, just today I shut down that instrument because the person doing insect attractant scent work didn't have any more samples to run, it takes a few days to bring it back up so won't be running it again until someone needs it.

I've always thought the whole insulin thing was a little weird, and the more I study human physiology, the more skeptical I get by that kind of thinking. Our bodies react to specific chemical compositions, and most receptors in the body are keyed very specifically, especially glucose receptors. As I understand it, an artificial sweetener provides sweetness without providing an energy input, for the most part, anyway. Cells need to produce a lot of energy, and we can't metabolize just ANYTHING. Using energy to bring an artificial sweetener into a cell would probably be wasted energy, and cells tend to be very efficient in how they go about doing stuff. Moderation in anything is key.

Very Nice Marty. That leads me to a question I should have asked ages ago. Is it strictly speaking, betrayal of SOME kind if I don't have an MST3K or a Rifftrax themed shirt? See I've always been BIG on T-shirts because I feel that nothing represents who you are like the shirts you wear. I have bunches... mostly MCU related, video game related and some Transformers shirts. I know for sure I had an MST3K shirt at one time but eventually after like several years of wearing it it just got a bunch of holes in it or it ripped or something.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this... is there officially licensed Rifftrax themed shirts for sale out there? I mean I don't want to go buying some shirts unless some percentage of the proceeds go into Mike, Bill, Kevin's(and by extension Bridget and Mary Jo's) pockets.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this... is there officially licensed Rifftrax themed shirts for sale out there? I mean I don't want to go buying some shirts unless some percentage of the proceeds go into Mike, Bill, Kevin's(and by extension Bridget and Mary Jo's) pockets.

Torgospizza said the stuff like shirts sold so slowly that they couldn't afford to store them any more, that's why they stopped.

He mentioned this place in a post on Reddit, don't know if the guys get a cut but you could ask, if you go to the page for an item there's contact info at the bottom:

I've always thought the whole insulin thing was a little weird, and the more I study human physiology, the more skeptical I get by that kind of thinking. Our bodies react to specific chemical compositions, and most receptors in the body are keyed very specifically, especially glucose receptors. As I understand it, an artificial sweetener provides sweetness without providing an energy input, for the most part, anyway. Cells need to produce a lot of energy, and we can't metabolize just ANYTHING. Using energy to bring an artificial sweetener into a cell would probably be wasted energy, and cells tend to be very efficient in how they go about doing stuff. Moderation in anything is key.

You say you are skeptical on the body preparing to digest food based on initial cues it gets ("the whole insulin thing...skeptical")?

So, when hungry, if you smell good food, your stomach has never growled? That's the stomach preparing to eat by producing more acid and starting to churn to break it up. You've never had the experience of thinking of a favorite food and having your mouth water? That is your body preparing to start the process of digesting by preparing enough saliva to start to break down the carbs in whatever you eat.

Other things you said are true: the body can't just digest anything. And that is part of the problem: because the extra insulin produced makes more of the actual carbs/sugars that are ingested stored as fat (which also does not leave them available for the actual body processes they are needed for). And, as you said: the artificial sweetener is not taken into the cell - but any other sugars from any sugars or starches that are eaten are the things that get stored.

This video is HIGHLY questionable and suspect, as there is no-one on the staff of that company that has ANY medical or medical-related degree mentioned in their information section, yet they are giving out medical 'advice'. The people I've gotten the information I've shared from have at the very least degrees in nutrition (the woman I got that specific info on artificial sweeteners from is JJ Virgin, who has a MENSA-level IQ that she applies to nutritional information), some Ph.D.s, some M.D.s (Dr. Amen is a big go-to guy for information). For all anyone knows the people creating the YouTube video are employees of companies making artificial sweeteners. Monsanto (not known for its artificial sweeteners, but known for a great deal else) has a HUGE number of paid people who scour the internet to squelch and intimidate anyone who says ANYTHING contrary to their pro-anything-Monsanto-created propaganda. This was made VERY clear when 'The Monsanto Papers' came out. It would not suprirse me if companies who make a great deal of money selling untested chemicals (or those with known negative test results) - such as artificial sweeteners - aren't producing their own propaganda, particularly in the face of much-delayed actual research on the health costs of those cash cows. Hell, from the link that MartyS provided, the essential oil companies are doing it, and they have a MUCH smaller profit to be made than Spenda, Sucralose, Aspartame, etc.

There's nothing wrong with artificial flavors as long as they come from a reputable company. I run chemical analysis on scents and flavors in the lab, most of the flavor or smell that you recognize comes from a handful of chemicals in various amounts. Fairly easy to make them to even higher purity levels than they occur in plants. Isoamyl alcohol made in the lab is exactly the same as that made in a banana. Extracting it from a banana has the same risks of contamination as making it from raw materials, it's all down to how clean the equipment is and how clean or pure the sources are.

Anyway, I thought companies can't say natural if it's artificial or imitation? So the Sodastream stuff is probably extracted and purified from plants, just that the mixture they use for something like the lime flavor doesn't come from actual limes. Maybe someday I'll bring some into work and run it to see if there are any harmful contaminates in them. But it won't be for a while, just today I shut down that instrument because the person doing insect attractant scent work didn't have any more samples to run, it takes a few days to bring it back up so won't be running it again until someone needs it.

As long as the lab-created chemicals are the same isomers of chemicals, then I can't see how they could possibly be problematic. But purely lab-created chemicals that IMITATE (not replicate) smells or tastes are - to the body - simply other things that have to be dealt with, and which MAY have negative consequences being ingested. They may do that if the chemical structure imitates something negative in or for the body, or partially fits onto receptor sites on the cells, or else interferes with the creation or activity of any of the thousands of proteins and enzymes that the body produces. There is also the possibility of some dangerous or damaging interaction with the 100,000+ COMPLETELY UNTESTED chemicals which have been added to the food and skin-care supply of this country. [For anyone interested in getting a true idea of how little of the chemicals you ingest daily are actually proven safe to ingest, do a search for the GRAS 'regulations' for chemical use in the food and cosmetic (which includes soap/shampoo) supply in this country.] MartyS, in your lab: would you put 100,000 untested complex chemicals into a beaker together, let them interact with one another, and then ingest them? I sincerely doubt it. Frankly, I doubt you'd even put a half-dozen untested chemicals in a beaker just because of the potential you might inhale some of the gas given off by a possible unexpected interaction. [Hell, mix the common bleach and ammonia in cleaning supplies and you get mustard gas. For thousands of untested chemicals which have not been tested together?]

With your question starting your second paragraph: no, there is no legal definition of "all-natural" and so it is ONLY a marketing gimmick used to trick people into believing that the same old shit is actually safe. There have been numerous contaminants, including Round-Up, found in packages of food marked "all natural". Unless a package says "USDA Certified Organic" it actually is not guaranteed to be 'all natural' ('all natural' meaning 'nothing created in a lab is in this').

Oh, for anyone wondering, when a pre-made food item says, "organic" it may be only the main ingredient that is organic. [e.g. some "organic chicken nuggets" may have organic chicken, but the wheat or corn used in the breading may be GMO, which also means it is SATURATED with Round-Up which has been proved to kill gut bacteria, and also to cause (at the very least) non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which my father was recently treated for.] So single-ingredient organic is the only way to know that one's food is potentially-dangerous chemical-free.

I've been WAY past my capacity lately (since May) - with the three cracked teeth, one of which now has to be pulled - so this is my last post on any of this.

[Oh, and anyone commenting about what I've written, arguing against Monsanto basically being an evil, deceitful, greedy company that doesn't give the slightest shit about life on this planet, or that their products are safe, can be assumed to be a paid Monsanto troll (or at the very least, one who has been sucked in and mistakenly believed Monsanto's decades-long propaganda onslaught on the population).]

Two groups of guys opened fire on each other in the Springfield Mall parking lot today, several cars with bullet holes but no one hit so people were very lucky. Same Mall a crazy woman killed a few people back in 85, I was in the mall a few days later and they hadn't fixed all the bullet holes in the glass store fronts. Today they would cover that stuff up because of everyone having cameras on them all the time.